In a bid to curb the sale and distribution of State lotteries being run in contravention of the Lotteries Regulation Act, 1998, the State government has urged the Union Home Ministry to ban the entry of Mizoram lottery to Kerala.
Taxes Secretary Minhaj Alam has written separate letters to the Union Home Ministry and the Chief Secretary of Mizoram to flag the violations and also other major flaws in the conduct of the lottery.
In response to a letter from the Chief Secretary of Mizoram seeking permission for launching its Super Deluxe weekly lotteries from August 7 in the State, he said that its basic agreement with a private distributor engaged for conducting the lottery itself was flawed and grossly violated all major provisions of the Act.
The State government had specifically pointed out the violations of such lotteries in a memorandum submitted to the Centre in 2004. The Centre had prohibited the sale of Sikkim government lotteries in the State for two years from 2010 and extended it for two more years in June 2015. But the ban did not apply to Mizoram lotteries since it withdrew from the State in 2010 itself. But both lotteries had similar violations and it continued to remain unaddressed, the letter said.
When the Mizoram government placed advertisements for selling its tickets in the State last week before furnishing an official intimation, the State government took up the issue with the Union Home Ministry, citing that the latter blatantly violated the directions the Centre issued before starting operations.
The State government has also informed the Centre that the violations cited by it against the Sikkim lottery in 2004 were applicable to Mizoram and that the latter is being run illegally.
CAG report
The letter has also quoted the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report citing the flaws in the agreement signed between the Mizoram government and four distributors to conduct print and online lotteries, to substantiate its case.
The CAG had noted major security and other violations in the lotteries of a number of States such as Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Punjab, and Bodoland Territorial Council. The lotteries were being printed from one press in Faridabad. The design, size, and the paper were being indirectly determined by the distributor and printing presses, the report said.
In this context, the State government demanded immediate orders to stop the sale of Mizoram lottery tickets in the State.
